"You gotta girl?" Naptown Red asked, trying to school some of these young brothers coming up.

"Rhianna," Fathead said.

"How y'all doing?"

"We a'ight."

"A'ight? What's 'a'ight'?"

"We cool. She be sweating me for money. Wants some new gear."

"Her babies need stuff, too."

"Let her go to they babies' daddies then. s.h.i.t. I'll pay for my own, but I for d.a.m.n sure ain't paying for anyone else's. This whole relationship bulls.h.i.t's more trouble than it's worth. I'm a hit.i.t-and-quit-it sort of man."

A more introspective turn might have seen this as a case of the sins of the father and all that bulls.h.i.t pa.s.sed on to his son. And his son's son. From firing up some herb for social occasions, Red's folks graduated to the sometime line of c.o.ke, by which point they'd moved into an apartment. They owed everyone in the neighborhood. s.h.i.t, they owed everyone in the family. Some months they sold off their food stamps in order to make ends meet, as they smoked up the rent money again. He wasn't mad at being poor, but things didn't have to be as bad as they were. His clothes never fit. The house was never cleaned. There was never anyone doing any cooking. One day, he found a broken piece of antenna behind the curtain on the window sill of the Section 8 half of a duplex. Its intentional placement had the air of importance, laying on the altar of the sill. It took him a while to divine its use as a crack pipe.

The education system also taught him and pa.s.sed on lessons. Early in his elementary school years, Naptown Red had been labeled learning disabled (LD). The educators shuffled him off to be in separate cla.s.ses. When that freckle-faced Andy Baumer spread lies about his mother, Red bit the s.h.i.t out of him and was labeled emotionally disabled (ED). His mother jumped all over that once she figured out she could get more welfare benefits. When the boys in his neighborhood began affecting the same look, he wore his hat to the right and was labeled a Gangsta Disciples (GD). Little more than a weekend gangsta, he ran with them for a hot second, flew his black and blue colors, broke into cars, boosted stuff from stores, smoked a little weed.

Then he decided to dream bigger.

"What's this business you trying to speak on?" Naptown Red asked.

"I heard you were the man to get with." This here fool Fathead done brought around Prez. He never knew who he wanted to run with. Every time Red turned around, this boy was with someone else. He'd give this much to Prez: he was reserved, didn't raise his voice. A little soft for the streets, he still had a nice way about him, though it looked like the dragon had chewed him up and walked him around the block a few times. Still, he didn't act superior, but kept things low-key and played it smart. He knew who was taking over.

"I run this over here," Naptown Red said.

"I'm looking to do some work," Prez said.

"You think you can handle this here-ron." Naptown Red exaggerated the p.r.o.nounciation of heroin for old school effect. These youngbloods didn't know.

"I ain't tripping." He could tell the way he spoke to Red irritated him.

"You vouch for him?"

"Yeah, he cool," Fathead said. "Not like his strung-out a.s.s was Five-O or nothing."

Fear made men bl.u.s.ter. Naptown Red trusted him because Fathead needed him to make things happen, just as Naptown Red needed someone with good street eyes. Information was gold. The man with the keys to the dope line was gold. Theirs was a relationship of mutual mining. Red studied his body language. When he was asked a sticky question, Fathead folded like yesterday's newspaper. He was all about protecting himself.

"All right, come on. I got a party to go to. You roll with me and I'll show you how it's done."

Mulysa had to die. For Tristan the hunt was long overdue. The portrait Iz sketched of her, especially the smile on her face, mocked her. The front part of her hair was tucked down while the rear half flared into an Afro. Her features generous and sculpted. Gold eyes, dark skin, smile lines around her mouth. Iz always believed she was terrible at drawing hands. Yet there they were, strong but delicate. And powerless to stop the men in her life from hurting her or her own.

The thing Tristan resented most about her relationship with her father was how grateful she was to him. And for all that he'd done, she still wanted to turn to him. Thirteen years old, scared, alone...

it had been a terrible Thanksgiving. It was just her and her father. She'd spent the day cooking while he laid back on the couch, slowly draining the bottle of Crown Royal, absently watching football. The game didn't matter. Nor did he stir for commercials. His was a slow-cooking stew of loneliness and self-loathing.

"Daddy, I have something to tell you." Tristan unfolded a TV table and placed it in front of her father. With meticulous care, she arranged a plate and napkin. Fork, knife, then spoon. She slipped a coaster under the nearly empty gla.s.s. One by one, she brought out saucepans of food, as if for his inspection. Macaroni and cheese. Mashed potatoes. Fried okra. Greens. Turkey. Fried corn. Ham. Cranberry sauce. Each entree greeted with a barely perceptible nod or flicker of the eyes. Grief had swallowed him whole since her mother died. It took him in little bits, slowly robbing him of the will to work, go through the motions of life, or move. He neither made nor took calls. His friends, what few he had, rarely stopped by anymore. And he looked at her, with his bloodshot, rheumy eyes which looked too large for his face. The stink of alcohol on his breath. He slipped into her room at night and held her. She laid awake in panic not knowing whether to move or remain frozen, and the paralysis of indecision left her in his embrace. Each night, the entanglement became more familiar. More intimate. His hands resting on her waist. He breathed her in, or the memory of her mother. And she feared what new intimacy each night might bring.

"Daddy, I... I'm not like other girls," she blurted out. Her heart slammed into her chest with a machine gunning thud. She could barely catch her breath. Her hands trembled with the weight of antic.i.p.ation, so she gripped each pot handle firmer. She hadn't rehea.r.s.ed what she was going to say. She wanted it to seem natural. Now she cursed herself for not better thinking it through.

"It's not a phase or nothing. I been this way as long as I can remember. I just... don't like boys."

There, she had said it. The words hung in the air and it was too late to take them back. Nothing could be unsaid. Or unremembered. His slightly yellow eyes turned toward her, barely noting the food placed before him like a placating sacrifice before a bloodthirsty G.o.d. The eyes studied her with a gleam of unfamiliarity, clouded by a slight lascivious glint.

The plate of food slapped Tristan in the face. The gravy from the mashed potatoes scalded her eyes. She ripped the plate from her face, food dripping from her cheek in time to make out the blur approaching her. The fresh sting of her father's palm against her jaw sent her tumbling to the floor.

Tristan knelt there, kernels of corn falling from her hair and cranberry sauce trailing down her cheek like streaking blush. Her face warmed from where her father struck her. As if he could slap the gay out of her, her father a tall man, looming like a wild grizzly above her prepared to pounce on her. He never said a word. The Detroit Lions rumbling backward on the television screen was the only sound besides her father's labored breathing. She didn't know where the attack, the anger, came from. His daughter had declared herself a d.y.k.e. Her tacit admission that she was no longer his. His own grief finally devoured him. His self-loathing from not working, not being where he wanted to be in life, missing his wife, and being lost, all of it bubbling up and lashing out in a feral outburst. He would control one thing in his life and house.

Tristan.

He lumbered toward her.

Tristan had had enough. She was done with this world of pain and abuse at the hands of someone who was supposed to protect her. Her fingers balled into a fist. Her hair, slick with gravy, fell to one side of her face. Tristan's body heaved as if wracked with sobs. He pressed his attack, leaning low to scoop her up, to lay his hands on her, to act as if he owned her or her body.

She punched him in his throat.

Her father reeled backward, unable to catch his breath. She pounced into him, letting her weight and momentum do most of the work in toppling him backward. Next to the fork she had once so carefully placed on her napkin. She pressed the tines to his eye and waited until she had his full attention.

"You come near me again..." She shifted her position, drawing her knee into his crotch. "You touch me again, and I'll kill you."

"You are dead to me."

Tristan put her full weight on her knee to push herself up, then ran out of the house. Into the waiting arms of the night. To the streets...

...where Mulysa found her.

"What's a fine girl like you doing out here?" Mulysa asked, his voice all silvery and polished in that way roughnecks could be.

"Chilling." Though terrified and alone, Tristan wasn't going to admit any vulnerability, silvery and polished or not. Mulysa sized her up with a glance.

"Where you stay at?"

"Around."

"Girl, why you playing? I know these here streets like the back of my hand."

There it was. She was penniless. Hungry. Hurting. And Mulysa was there with his big wad of cash. Taking her to expensive restaurants, well, s.h.i.t, Olive Garden anyway. Treating her like she was worth something.

"You got potential."

"Potential to do what?"

"Be in this here game. Come work for me."

"Doing what?" Tristan knew the moment would arrive. Nothing was free, especially from a man. He'd fed her, clothed her, and put her up. Rent was due.

"I got something for you." He slid a wooden box over to her. "Didn't I say I'd take care of you?"

She opened the box up. Inside were two thin blades. She'd never seen anything like them. She could grip them like bra.s.s knuckles, but the edges jutted out at angles. She loved the way they caught the light and their perfect balance in her hands.

"You right, you right." Though his tone said, "you most certainly do."

"What do you want me to do with these?"

"You got all that hate and anger in you. I just want to put it to good use. Get you paid."

Tristan went out early in the morning and would stray into rivals' territories at seven in the morning. Catch them when they'd been out all night, catch them drowsy or otherwise slipping. And get them. She staked out places from behind bushes for hours. Rain, sleep, snow, heat, she would do whatever it took, suffer whatever conditions to get to her enemy.

The things she did in Mulysa's name were bad enough. When she found Iz only a year later, she was a different woman. Hard. Skilled. Feared. No one knew her name, she had no name as far as she was concerned. She was simply an extension of Mulysa's will. His name rang out because he could always call her down. His shadow. His weapon of choice. Iz changed all of that.

Iz she found in an alley. She reminded her of a kitten which had been abandoned to fend for itself. Dirty. Bleeding from a hundred little scratches. Infested with who knows what. Living under abandoned cars. Lost. Frightened. Could practically fit into the palm of her hand. The kind of kitten that immediately got into her heart and made her want to protect it. Not only safeguard it, but be the kind of person worthy, privileged enough, to be with it. With her. Iz always thought that Tristan saved her life, but Tristan knew it was the other way around.

Mulysa took Iz away from her. She would have done anything for Iz and proved so on many an occasion.

He got her back on drugs after Iz fought so hard to get clean. And he touched her. Touched her the way Tristan's father wanted to touch her.

And he had to pay.

The blades curved naturally around her palms like an extension of her arm. He would pay. And pay again.

Dreadlocks started in the middle of his head, the front half faded, Prez shifted in his seat, adjusting it further into a lean position as if the person who sat in the seat before him wasn't gangster enough. None of which fooled Naptown Red. He sensed Prez's lingering discomfort, his church-boy heart beating through his thug-lite exterior. Didn't matter, though, since it wasn't as if the church bus was going to pick him up out here.

Both sides of the street were lined with parked cars for blocks in either direction. Naptown Red parked around back then led them around to the front of the house. The wall thrummed with the pulse of the music inside. A couple of the neighbors hung out on their porches, drink and cigarettes in hand, shooting the s.h.i.t. It wasn't as if they were going to call the police at the first sound of drunk and/or loud n.i.g.g.as on the lawn. Enjoying his role as concierge and consummate host, Naptown Red smiled, hearing the music b.u.mp as soon as they opened the doors.

This wasn't some bas.e.m.e.nt party, all dim lights, slow jams, and grinding on the dancefloor. No, the party was all the way live: bright, loud, and a little crazy. Li'l Jon skeet-skeet-skeeted from the DJ's turntable, the ba.s.s turned so loud that it threatened an a.s.sault charge. Naptown Red took in a deep whiff. Sure, there were the usual chips and s.h.i.t in bowls scattered strategically through the house so that no guest had to stray too far to snack, but that wasn't the kicker. Marble's Soul Kitchen catered the party: collard greens, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, and fried chicken. Red needed them to know that he would take better care of them than their mommas. And the best part, ladies walked around with silver trays, serving beer, wine, or (inexpensive) champagne.

Topless.

"They cool?" the brother at the door asked, stopping Fathead and Prez. Samoan had to run in his family, because he topped four bills easy. Dressed in all black, he gave a wary stare at Fathead. His Tshirt was a dirty shade of beige over a pair of blue sweatpants. He wore dress shoes though he had no socks. No watch either; his minutes stretched into hours and melted into days. Lost.

"Yeah, they with me."

"What was that about?" Prez asked.

"Cover. s.h.i.t, I ain't trying to feed a house full of hungry-a.s.s n.i.g.g.as out of pocket. Brothers don't go anywhere else for a dinner and a show for free. Twenty dollars a head, plus they got to tip the ladies. And they were happy to pay the twenty dollars." Now that they knew what they were getting, Naptown Red already had it figured out that next time he would charge $50. Word was out as soon as he had a full house. Sell it as an exclusive ticket and let word of mouth take care of the rest.

"Didn't you used to go out with her?" Fathead pointed to a high yellow-complexioned honey, a little on the thin side, but tall and proud. Her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s popped pertly with each step. A tight Jheri curl, that looked like a baby Afro from a distance, crowned her. She grinned defiantly, taking a higher step for an additional bounce.

"Yeah, I hit that." She wore the navy-blue shorts of a flight attendant's uniform and blue hose and matching pumps. He loved the way she rolled and pitched, too bad he couldn't remember her name. Sometimes he just opened his mouth and whatever line of s.h.i.t trickled out he worked with, counting on his charm and wit to see him through. Mostly, he stalled for time to think of a way to turn the situation to his advantage. "I get down like Sprite, except that I don't obey my thirst, I obey my look. That's my motto."

Naptown Red left Prez to find his own footing at the party. Church boy or not, he still had eyes that worked and there was no harm in perusing the smorgasbord of flesh that he as consummate host considerate enough to turn up the air conditioning to make sure the nipples stayed popped had laid out. Red toured the party, giving his guests the opportunity to thank him and tell him how much the bomb his party was. Playing it cool, he gave a slight head nod, letting his eyes tell the rest. The party had splintered into discrete cl.u.s.ters of conversations and activities. Leering thugs pretended to watch the large-screen TV set to pre-season football, ogling any nipple in sight. He thought about getting another TV and setting up a PlayStation console on it, but he didn't know how that would go over. Maybe next time. Thick rolls of smoke billowed from the dining room.

But the women were the center attraction, exactly how he wanted it (thus he nixed his plans to add video games: if it came down between t.i.tties and John Madden, it was a toss-up. And they could get John Madden at home, but only Red could provide the t.i.tties). The white women looked straight out of a "Blondes On Blacks" p.o.r.n site, just this side of white trash that upscale Jerry Springer demographic that brothas couldn't resist. The sistas stepped right out of a rap video. The more modest ones wore lingerie which revealed more than if they had simply come topless, so Red didn't complain. The party threatened to overwhelm him. Red made his way to him, pointedly rubbing against one of the ladies "mmm-hmm"-ing his approval in her ear. She craned her neck to flash him a smile.

"I'm all about the squilla. He'll be here," Naptown Red said, but Prez had lost interest in anything that he had to say. Following the strength of Prez's gaze only to land on the figure of a young lady dancing on a nearby table. She wore a white cowboy hat and matching leather skirt and boots. Her ensemble practically glowed against her mocha skin. Auburn hair flowed out the back of her hat. Long slender legs uncrossed and crossed quickly when she sat in mid-routine. A tattoo, like the top half of two red b.a.l.l.s, peeked from above her skirt.

Her eyes searched Naptown Red for the tell. He nodded, letting her know that a large tip was heading her way. She turned, without saying a word, and pushed Prez onto the couch. Whatever mild protests he offered ceased when the DJ picked up on the cue and interrupted an Usher cut with another Li'l Jon cut. She turned her backside to Prez, her body catching the rhythm of the song. She slinked backward, her body contorting into a languid curving "S" that made its way toward him. Swishing side to side, she made a tentative dip into his lap. Turning to face him, she ran her hands down his chest, crouching between his legs as she continued to let her hands trail lower.

Prez jumped.

The gathering crowd laughed. Red feared that his plan might backfire, causing Prez to be the center of humiliation, but the guys soon started cheering Prez and the girl on. She stood up, shaking about a few more times before settling into Prez's lap for real. She let out an approving "ooo" much to the delight of Prez, whose back was clapped for the honor.

"Come on, I got more to show you," Red said.

"Aren't your guests going to miss you?" Prez asked.

"With all them t.i.tties to stare at? They probably don't even know that I'm out." Naptown Red beamed with a cobra's smile. "We got business in back."

"That where the hidden s.e.x rooms are?" Fathead asked, not able to keep the eagerness out of his voice. Naptown Red explained that the rumors circulating about his parties rumors he, himself, started was all about marketing. He made it sound as if there was an extra level of party available to the truly connected. Much like the exclusive rumored to be high-stakes-only poker game. It all added to the mystique, coming to life behind the closed doors, away from the noise and temptation.

"What we playing?" Fathead asked. "Texas Hold 'Em?"

"You been watching them white boys on TV too long." Naptown Red pictured himself as a prince who ruled with style. He didn't need all the chestthumping and territory-marking p.i.s.sing contests that came with having to prove their bona fides. No, he'd simply get a feel for them over cards. Some James Bond villain s.h.i.t, except none of that punk-a.s.s baccarat mess. They'd play Spades.

"Hup. He got the king of spades," Fathead said. He had a habit of thinning his eyebrows whenever he was on meth. These days, two scabby rectangles above his eyes scarred his face and made him appear constantly startled. He knew one girl who removed her eyelashes, convinced they were antennae broadcasting her business to the FBI. With lips like cracked rubber, the flesh of his cheeks eaten away, and a ring of fat swelling his neck, Fathead soldiered on.

"It ain't what you got, it's how you play 'em," Naptown Red said.

"There are still three cards that can take that king." Prez ordered his cards. He'd come a long way from when King found him scrounging around for bits of rock behind where Dred's soldiers had been slinging, hoping for anything that might have spilled out. A life that revolved around doing enough work to sc.r.a.pe together enough for another blast. Those days weren't too far in his rearview mirror, but King's words echoed in his head. He was full of potential and could do anything he wanted. It was time to start living into that potential. But he didn't know where to begin. Or how. Only that he had to do something, somehow begin his journey. King believed in him and he wanted to justify that belief.

Trapped in a cycle of need and placating need, he constantly sought attention to soothe some deep ache inside. Wayne helped him focus on his future and had him reading all sorts of books to stimulate his mind and his curiosity. A New Kind of Christian. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Black Boy. Blue Like Jazz. And the Bible, of course.

"Don't confuse being a character with having it," Wayne told him.

He knew he was being shaped into something new. Something wondrous. And he prayed for Wayne. And King.

"I hope someone does for you what you've done for me."

The residents of Breton Court, the Phoenix Apartments, and so many places in between, had long given up on themselves. But King a street legend thought he was ready. And Prez wanted to prove to him that he was. No matter what it cost him.

"West side n.i.g.g.as had to go east side cause King had that place locked down. That's a whole lot of unexploited real estate."

"So what you looking for?" Prez asked.

"Drilling rights, motherf.u.c.ker. What you think?" Naptown Red asked. "You think you ready to put in some work?"

"If there's work to be done," Prez said. "I'm here to do it."

So he decided to get on with Naptown Red. Maybe learn some of the inside news and feed it to King. He doubted King and them would approve, but he figured he could handle the risk considering the potential payoff.

"Time to raise up, gentlemen."

"Your time is done."

Naptown Red thought about setting up a dogfighting ring in a daycare. Something to carve out his own niche in the game. Low risk, low overhead. Low pay-off. If he wanted a steady stream of ends, he'd have to get his own connect and set up his own operation.

"Uh oh, she coming," Prez said. "When he sat back, I knew he had that one."